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I don’t have anything constructive to add but I’d be interested to hear how this works out if you do send it.

I travel to the US frequently and I know how cheap they can be but I’d wonder by the time you pay for shipping and any GST they might sting you for if it would add up at all.

Your best (lowest cost) bet I think would be to get a freight forwarder who you can ship it to domestically in the US and they can throw it in the container. That’s what I did when I brought tyres in from the states.

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Do not think terrestrial signals are a problem anymore, with most shifting to satellite based digital systems. Have HDMI will travel. Also, a lot of TVs have a separate switching power brick these days(as per your laptop power brick), so it shouldn't be an issue

As with anything shipped, packaging is very important. you would find that the best way to ship is in a hard wooden case filled with foam (but your cost savings will evaporate). if you have access to a freight forwarder with a dedicated bin/console direct to NZ, that would be for the best so that the bin is sealed in the US only to be opened in NZ.

another option is to ship via newegg, letting them take the risk of shipping. :shrugs:

Do not think terrestrial signals are a problem anymore, with most shifting to satellite based digital systems. Have HDMI will travel. Also, a lot of TVs have a separate switching power brick these days(as per your laptop power brick), so it shouldn't be an issue

All Television broadcast in NZ has been digital since 2013 , the terrestrial (digital) is superior to the satelite based (digital) broadcast because bandwidth is cheaper so channel allocations are broader, but in reality both are crap because the highest rate allocated in any one ( terrestrial) channel now is only 6Mb/S which is just over 10% of what is available from Blu Ray. Satellite (SKY) is typically 2Mb/S but may have multiple channels multiplexed into it meaning the individual video stream is sod all bits per second.

And if you want to put that in context: native 1080 / 1920 PAL digital at 8 bit colour depth is 1.2Gbits/ S and the so called 4 k is 12Gbits/S at 50 frames/ S - we played with12 bit colour depth signals in the 90's now they were nice but would require 18Gb/S for 4 k.

And as an aside the colur depth in analogue PAL was the equivalent of 12 Bit digital

DTV started out as a means to provide higher data rate capacity to deliver higher quality content (HD) but has been "commercialised" and sliced up to cram more sh*t into a single channel and maximise revenue.

HDMI is just a data transfer protocol with lots of embeded transfer conditions (Copyright / use rights, zones etc.) not a Video standard it is incapable of any signal conversion. It is yet another failed attempt for a certain country to orchestrate royalty revenue streams and control international media distribution rights.

I used to buy Full Multi System TV kit from the US (or, perhaps the Peter Justesen Catalogue still exists in some form, for folks in your type of employ? www.pj.dk ) - and successfully brought back my full multi-system Sony Trinitron and a very good Panasonic HiFi VHS also with full multi system, back in the day... though as you'd appreciate, back then things were more cut-and-dried (simple), and this kit has long since been recycled! These niche sellers (they were in the US - usually around NYC or Texas, and sometimes CA) may still exist, and you might be able to score a TV that is *fully* compatible with NZ operation, and even a full muli-zone BluRay player to go with it.

Considerations in the modern world for TV from another region:

- Voltage. Will it run on 230VAC?

- tuning and TV system (eg you'll need to be able to tune Freeview in NZ! so it'll be PAL and with our particular setup for digital TV)

- App Store (coz we're doing more and more on-demand and app-based viewing these days)... so can your (for example) American-market Samsung be directed to pick up local apps from the NZ Samsung store such as NEON, TVNZ, ThreeNow etc?

- Cost of freight

- unavailability of spares if it needs service.

These things become white-elephants, can't sell em, can't give em away, towards the end of their useful life.

If you then take into account how your Dad wants to use his TV (eg the hassle of getting a foreign market set to integrate in NZ), perhaps springing a grand to 1200 kiwi for a very good end-of-run 55" Samsung (or similar) down here, with warranty etc, might be the best overall solution. Either way, you'll be a hero.

Ahh Secam the one legged French standard that emulated PAL. One legged because it only had one colour phasing pulse not the two of PAL - NTSC has no colour phasing thats why it is never twice the same colour - the phasing on NTSC is to ensure the brigtness is consistent- not sure of the logic there as brightness is in the amplitute domain and therefore easy to regulate, where as colour is in the Frequency domain where phasing is critical.

Not sure if i SECAM is still alive, it was marginal in the 80's and present only in France, French dependancies and parts of Russia, given the significnt similarity and no benefits over PAL most just adopted PAL by default .

Given it was marginal 35 years ago I considered including it might just see us go off track and get into a discussion about ZTV standards rather than help Dan make a good decision.

Edited June 5 by 3pedals

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All Television broadcast in NZ has been digital since 2013 , the terrestrial (digital) is superior to the satelite based (digital) broadcast because bandwidth is cheaper so channel allocations are broader, but in reality both are crap because the highest rate allocated in any one ( terrestrial) channel now is only 6Mb/S which is just over 10% of what is available from Blu Ray. Satellite (SKY) is typically 2Mb/S but may have multiple channels multiplexed into it meaning the individual video stream is sod all bits per second. ﻿

And if you want to put that in context: native 1080 / 1920 PAL digital at 8 bit colour depth is 1.2Gbits/ S and the so called 4 k is 12Gbits/S at 50 frames/ S - we played with12 bit colour depth signals in the 90's now they were nice but would require 18Gb/S for 4 k.

And as an aside the colur depth in analogue PAL was the equivalent of 12 Bit digital

DTV started out as a means to provide higher data rate capacity to deliver higher quality content (HD) but has been "commercialised" and sliced up to cram more sh*t into a single channel and maximise revenue.

HDMI is just a data transfer protocol with lots of embeded transfer conditions (Copyright / use rights, zones etc.) not a Video standard it is incapable of any signal conversion. It is yet another failed attempt for a certain country to orchestrate royalty revenue streams and control international media distribution rights.

And that is why it's easier to just pirate everything. You get the best quality with no BS or ads...

All I want is a service where I can buy movies and TV shows online with no subscription, and get the best quality. But right now the easiest and best option is the free and illegal one

You got me there... there's also Youtube and Google Play for movies, which doesn't require me to buy special hardware. So yeah movies are mostly covered and I can't really whine about that. I did end up pirating Wonder Woman when I couldn't find a legal online option for 4k at the time, only 1080p...

But you still can't get most TV shows without signing up for monthly subscriptions from Amazon ect? I watch so few TV shows it's hard to justify a subscription. I'd much rather buy them by the season...

I do subscribe to Google Play Music. I use it to stream music in my car so that's worthwhile.